Sanctuary of the Wicked
by Gevurah
Summary: The madness of the inmates of Azkaban Prison, as seen from the eyes of one S. Black, convicted murderer.


**Sanctuary of the Wicked **

_A Story by Gevurah_

_The madness of the inmates of Azkaban Prison, as seen from the eyes of one S. Black, convicted murderer. (Complete)_

The water drips steadily onto my head, into my brain. I can feel it trickling, cold and uncaring, along the inside of my skull, gathering my dim and brittle memories as it travels south, like snaring delicate flies in a spider's web, until it reaches the base and swirls into the drain-hole where my spine and skull connect, disappearing forever along the numb lengths of my spine. My brain cannot find those lost thoughts where they hide amid my spine.

Or, perhaps it is my mind and memories that are like the spider's web, gossamer strands as delicate as the breath of a child, carelessly destroyed by the harsh hand of man. That child once had a name.

I no longer know. I am lost. I can feel myself adrift in the tide of madness that encompasses this horrid place. The rope, which was my sanity, has worn over the years until at last it was a thin as the spider's strand and broke away easily from the rock I had bound it to those so many years ago- or did it? Maybe it is still here. Maybe I clutch it tightly in my desperate hands, only my hands are numb and I cannot feel its presence. I hope the latter is true.

I think I've lost count of time as well. Whether it is hours or minutes that pass, such things mean nothing to me now. I used to mark the days upon the cold stone walls of my cell; but I stopped long ago in a fit of despair. Now I regret my choice as the passage of days slip by, uncounted and miserably undocumented.

They brought a new inmate to the empty cell across the way from mine a little while ago. Or, perhaps, it has been longer than that for his rants and screams have stopped completely; and he does not strike me as the type to surrender easily. His tirades have long since reduced themselves to quiet moans of despair- so maybe he has been here longer than my mind can recall, or maybe he just doesn't possess a strong constitution. Either way, he's uninteresting and nothing like the cell's previous occupant.

Now she was a strong character, all wild bitterness and sociable insanity. I can't remember how long ago she went away, the days have wasted themselves away since then. However, I remember the day she came vividly- or, at least I think I do. In this maze time has built for me, it's hard to say such things with certainty.

It was cold in my cell the day she came and I was sitting, hunched into myself against the cold stone wall- but then again, it is always cold here and that description doesn't offer much distinction against any other day. I heard her voice first, a bristling cockney accent filled with rage, throwing verbal curses into the silence as she argued with a voiceless person, one loud voice having a quarrel with the air and stones of cold Azkaban. It was only as they neared that I was able to discern she argued with the guards, who were as mad as the lot of us and mute to boot. It took five of them to escort her to the cell and still she struggled, writhing and kicking against their grip. When she wasn't calling them every foul name I had ever heard, and then even some I hadn't, she snapped her teeth loudly in the air, attempting to bite the hands that held her.

Such an interesting commotion was always public entertainment and soon every visible prisoner had pressed themselves tightly against their individual cell doors, watching the scene with eager eyes and gleeful smiles. My nefarious cousin especially watched with playful interest from her cell on the opposite wall. The corners of her thin, cruel mouth quirked upwards in secret amusement as our callous guards forced the newest prisoner down the long hall to the awaiting cell.

With a push, a shove and a heave she landed on her backside in the empty cell. Even with her short copper-red hair in her eyes, I knew she glared at the guards. Her body language was tense and her hands were fisted at her sides, the tightly clenched knuckles having broken her fall harshly. She jumped to her feet as quick as a cat when they hastily shut and locked her cell door and leaped against it, shoving her impossibly bright hair out of her vision with one hand and the other griping the iron bars tightly. The skin on her knuckles was hobbled and bunched from her fall against the hard floor, and the blood was just beginning to show through the broken white skin.

"Come 'ere," she taunted them, her voice both gleeful and dangerous as she reached for them. I watched, fascinated, as bright redness bloomed on her hands and slowly built in volume till it began to trickle down her hand. There was beauty in that. Her blood was the color of poppies and her skin shone fair as the pale moon beneath the dirt that covered her hands. A wolf howled in the distance of my mind, a faded memory that pricked insistently at my tongue.

The guards were quick to back away and leave, anxious to be back wherever it was they stayed. "Ah- you're no fun," she pouted when they disappeared into the gloom at the far end of the hallway. I snorted and she swung her gaze to me, her dark eyes narrowing.

"What are you lookin' at?" she asked angrily. I merely laughed and hid my head shyly against my knees, stealing glances at her slyly from beneath my arms.

"Peek-a-boo," she chanted suddenly in a child's voice, catching my wandering gaze, "I see you." She swatted, her hands, still gripping the bars, trailing behind and above her. She leveled her gaze at me and, for an instant, I thought they glinted feral gold in the dim light.

"I asked you a question," she growled, the play gone from her voice. It was a dangerous voice. I wondered if it was make-believe.

"You're new," I stated simply.

"You're a smart one, aren't you?" she sneered. "Bet your mum was _real_ proud of you."

"On the contrary, she disowned me."

"Poor lamb," she drawled.

_Little Bo Peep, lost her sheep, and little lambs eat ivy._

"Careful," I said, mockingly dangerous, "else I'll eat you up."

She laughed suddenly and loudly. The sound was unnatural; it was the high, unfettered laugh of the insane. I was far enough along in my own madness to accept it, but some part of my brain recognized that the new girl was not right in the head. All the prisoners here were mad, but most entered perfectly sane, abit angry and dangerous. Here, madness was something that came with association, over time. Her insanity made her lucky and I envied her a little. At least she would be spared the pain of the long decent.

"What's your name?" she asked suddenly, dropping her arms and sitting on the cold floor, all traces of anger gone.

I frowned and struggled to remember.

"What's the matter?" she taunted. "Can't remember your own name?"

I glared at her. "It makes you forget," I said sullenly.

"What? Insanity?" she asked dubiously.

"This place," I snapped. "What's your name, since you're so cocky?"

Her eyebrows rose. "Touchy, touchy," she mocked, but answered my question regardless. "I'm Eros," her smile would have been charming had we been anywhere but here, "but they call me Black Eros."

I barked with laughter. "You're named after a god?"

"What can I say?" she said casually, shrugging her shoulders. "My parents were lunatics." She grinned manically. "Just like me."

"Sirius," I said abruptly, memory finally transforming itself into something lucid.

Her expression was confused. "What are you going on about?" she asked.

"My name," I answered triumphantly, "is Sirius."

Her eyebrows rose again. "You're parents named you after a star?"

"Yes, though you're one to talk."

"Poor doggie."

Memories bit the back of my brain. "What did you say?" I asked harshly, as an anger I almost didn't recognized welled up within my breast.

She grinned. "Doggie, doggie, doggie. Your parents named you after a dog," she explained stupidly.

My brain began to hurt. "Stop," I said, glaring at her as I climbed to my feet stiffly. My knees ached. I was getting old.

"How are you going to make me?" she taunted.

"I'll do it," I said briskly.

"I'd like to see you try. Come 'ere boy!" She said, patting the floor next to her. She just laughed when I savagely kicked my cell door and turned away from her.

"You can't ignore me forever, Rover."

"I can try."

"But you'll fail."

"I will not, Cupid."

"Is that your attempt to get back at me?"

"Yes."

"It's not working."

She must have decided to like me because from that day forward she would sit crossed-legged on the stones facing her barred cell door, just watching me. Gradually, I found myself doing the same, despite the cold floor and old knees. When she was in a talkative mood, she nattered on about trivial things; but mostly we just sat in silence and took comfort in a friendly presence.

"I'm going to escape," she declared one day.

I nearly chocked on a loud, abrupt bark of laughter.

"I'm serious, Sirius," she said, glaring at me. "I'm going to be the first person to escape this filthy place."

"And how do you suppose you're going to do that, Cupid?" I drawled, throwing small pebbles at her for sport.

"It's a secret," she said conspiringly with a girlish giggle. She always giggled.

"Can I come?" I asked, grinning.

She shrugged casually and smiled. "Sure."

I admit the distraction she brought to my melancholy was a welcome one. Her presence was bright and it shed light onto my darkened days, chasing away the shadows and making the long hours livable. She reminded me of someone I once knew: all youthful defiance, intelligence and daring. Her liveliness was jovial and contagious.

Sometimes, we shared animated banter, throwing good-natured insults across the space between our cells. She was delighted by my willingness to belittler her with crude remarks and she gave as good as she got. It was fun; and, if I wasn't careful, I could almost forget the truth of our situations.

It was a pleasant illusion. With her cutting repartee and lively personality, she often appeared more sane than the other inmates and I grew to rely on her presence and general good spirits to keep my own afloat.

Other times, though, her insanity was terrifyingly obvious. There were days when she would scream and rant against the unresponsive prison walls for no visible reason in the world, beating her grimy hands against the stones vehemently till they were shiny with red blood. On those days, I cowered in the far corner of my cell and covered my ears, close to tears. As her hold on her sanity slipped, so did mine as well. The world felt like it was coming down on those days.

_Chicken Little cried, "The sky is falling, the sky is falling!"_

Eros was particularly mad in the presence of the Dementors.

She was obsessed with them. It was unnatural. While the rest of us cowered in our beds, shaking with fear, she would climb the bars of her door and stretch out her pleading hands at their passage.

"Give us a kiss," she would hiss, catching hold of the Dementor's robes and pulling it closer as she lifted her head, looking for all appearances as if she were about to receive a lover's kiss.

Always, the dark specter would bend its head and stare at her. Only she knows what was in its hidden gaze, but whatever she saw, she would clutch the fabric of its robes tighter and stretch her neck forward in desperation. Nevertheless, the Dementor never submitted to her demands and it plucked her hands from itself casually. Each time, she would rail and cry when it moved away, begging for it to return, her eyes bright and crazed.

"There are better ways to kill yourself," I told her once after such an encounter.

Still perched upon the bars of her cage door, she swung her mad gaze toward me and grinned suddenly, her teeth bright against her grime-covered features. "Haven't you ever wished, just once, to be empty?" she asked.

I thought about it before answering. "No," I said simply.

"Then you're an idiot," she snapped, abruptly loosening her hold on the iron bars and dropping to the floor. She glared at me once before turning her back and leaning against the door in a sudden turn of sullenness. We lapsed into a long silence that might have lasted for days, neither of us moving from our hunched positions on the floor.

"How can you bear to touch them?" I whispered eventually.

She moved fractionally and looked at me sideways. "It's not so bad."

"But even being around them is horrible," I argued, continuing to whisper.

She turned to face me fully. "That's assuming you're whole to start with," she said cryptically, her gaze unexpectedly both clear and sane. That sanity only flashed for a moment before her wild gaze returned. "Besides," she continued in a gleeful voice, "I don't have a soul; I sold it to the devil ages ago."

There in that cold, horrid place, I didn't doubt her words for an instant.

I often wondered how old Eros was. She didn't look old enough to be in this place. Her face was smooth and her limbs still held the spring of youth. She wasn't part of the next generation, nor was she of my own. She was in-between., like an insolent teenager amid infants and old men.

She was far too young to be in this prison; and entirely far too young to have viciously murdered seventeen men as she claimed to have done.

What sort of life she must had led to have committed such crimes. I wished I could have protected her from the evils in the world. When I voiced my thoughts on the matter aloud, she glared at me and said that she was old enough to gut me in my sleep and enjoy it.

I left the topic alone after that.

Despite the circumstances, I _liked_ her. There was something comforting to have someone, other than myself, to converse with regularly. I liked having her there; she brought friendship when I no longer believed myself worthy. My feelings for her, however, were confusing and temperamental. She was neither lover, nor daughter- but somewhere in between.

Then, one day, she was gone.

I don't know if she escaped like she always said she would or if she died in the middle of the night. Had the guards come to take away her dead body while I slept, or was I lost in dream of melancholy, only noticing her absence days, or weeks, after it occurred?

Now, I sometimes think I imagined her in the empty cell, a product of loneliness from the mind of a middle-aged man. With her copper-red hair vivid against the shadowed dimness of stone and iron, she was a bright face in a world of bleakness- a fierce personality amid melancholy madness. Was it all created by my own delusional mind?

My brain supplies her voice now when I talk to myself. Her cocky, blunt tone mocks my own sullen one. She is always laughing and gleeful, pulling me from my self-despair when the solitary hours become too much for my mind to bear. I believe she loves me in her own way, and takes care of me the only way she knows how by distracting me from myself.

I am my own worst enemy and she is my devil, my fallen angel.

"Sirius, I have a plan," her voice whispered to me one night as I lay trying to sleep.

"What now?" I asked irritably, rolling over to my side.

"I'm going to escape."

"You've said this before, Eros."

"Yes, but this time it's going to work," she said as she snuggled against my back. "Do you still want to come?" she asked timidly.

I sighed heavily, loosing myself in the illusion. "Yes."

Can you be mad and be aware of it at the same time?

"Good, because you're part of my plan."

And so, in hushed tones, she told me her plan that night.

It was a good one.

_End Notes: This bit of dribble is not without its (many) flaws and is open for constructive criticism_


End file.
